He saw the city of Moctezuma fall and its people enslaved, and he was sure that even as the stronger Aztec were doomed, so were his own people. There would be hardly a trace.
These pale men from a land called Europe were robber warriors, and while it was not unusual for new tribes to move into old land, these pale men were different because they did not share ways, they imposed theirs. And theirs was a better way that did not demand the silliness of the sacrifice.
But he must not let his people die.
Among the camp of the pales were many tribes that sided with the newcomers against Moctezuma. One man recognized the Actatl king, and he went to the woman of Cortez and said, "That is not a slave but king of the Actatl." And the woman called the king to her and asked why he had come as a slave when as a king he would have been welcome.
"Have you told this to Cortez yet?" asked the king.
"I will tell him before sunrise," said the queen of the coastal people. And with the sharper, harder metal of the pale men, the king slit her throat. He did not take her heart.
When his hands were dry, he went to Cortez and told him of what he had heard as a young slave-that there were cities to the north of Moctezuma's that were of pure gold. The walls were gold. The ceilings were gold. The streets were gold.
Cortez asked why he had not told him this earlier.
"Oh, great lord of the pale men, I was asked by your woman for rooms of gold. In these cities of the north, they do not keep gold in rooms. They make bricks of gold and they build with it, so plentiful is this strange metal."
And with a glorious laugh, Cortez ordered his expedition to prepare. In the excitement the death of one translator, even a coastal queen, was not taken as an undue tragedy. There were many translators now.
Fifteen days north did the king take Cortez and his party and on the fifteenth, while in the mountains, the king slipped away at night.
Losing his guide, Cortez would give up the expedition, but for centuries after, those who followed him would continue to search for the Seven Cities of Cibol, cities that never existed except in the imagination of a king who wished to keep the greedy Spaniards away from him and his people.
On that fifteenth night, the king left with a horse and one gun with powder and bullets and flint and many books.
And a month later, he arrived at the main city of the Actatl. The king had been gone for four full seasons.
There was a new king now, and the priests of Uctut, in their confusion, announced one king would have to be killed. So the new king, who was a son of the old king, gathered his warriors and prepared to sacrifice his father. But when the first warrior approached, the old king used the thunder stick and, throwing nothing at all, killed the man. All seeing this turned on the new king to make him sacrifice for the old, but the old king would not have this. He had not returned to be king but to bring a message of a new undertaking that Uctut should approve.
The old king would take fifty women and ten young male children and ten young female children, and he would go off with them. But the priests would not have this for that would mean two kings lived and Uctut would be angered.
"Within but a few generations, Uctut will not be," said the old king. "This city will not be. The words we use will not be. The way priest greets king and king, priest and people greet their lords will not be. Nothing of the Actatl will be."
They asked if a god had spoken to him in a sacred vision, and so they would understand, he said that Uctut had told him.
This greatly worried the priests, who ordered each family to give a sacrifice so that Uctut would speak to the priests.
When the sacrifices were over, a person could not walk on the stone above the well for it sloshed with blood.
Basins of blood filled the cracks and crevices in the steps to the high stone. Red was the well that fed Uctut. Strong was the stench that came from the high stone.
And then there was knowledge. The old king could live, but each who left with him would have to become a priest of Uctut who would have to know the real name of the stone, and should the king's predictions be true, each would have to promise a priest's service to protect Uctut.
In this promise, in a civilization soon to die, in the lush green hills between Mexico and South America, was a seed planted that would sprout more than four hundred years later. Its flower would feed on human life, and nothing in that future world that could put a man on the moon would be able to defend against the descendants of those who still looked upon the shiny yellow moon in the night as another god.
The old king took his new family away toward an uninhabited valley he had seen once on a march. He bred well and he taught well. Each learned language and writing and numbers and the primitive science of the west. And when the new generation of his loins was ready, he sent them out in groups to find the pale invaders-not to kill them for there were too many-but to reproduce with them, taking the best child of each brood and teaching it that it was Actatl. Even if its hair were yellow, still it was Actatl.
For the king had discovered that the only way his people could live was to camouflage themselves in the colors of others, whoever they were.
Only one thing bothered him. He could not break them of Uctut, the silly rock. For while he taught them everything, Uctut and its real name became the one thing even the children knew, but not he. And thus it was prized even more. The more he said it was just a silly rock, the more important Uctut became to them as the symbol of what they had been and what they would preserve in their future lives. So he just stopped talking about it.
One day the last of the original women died, and he realized he was alone. He gave her ritual burial, although piling the stones was hard because he was an old man.
The new village was empty, and the clay tablets upon which Actatl sounds and European speech were written had not been used for many years, since the last trained group of youths had left. The older ones had not taken well to the new language and way of things, and most had stayed with him here in the hidden village. It was empty now, but for an old dog that could hardly move and had cried very much when its master had left years before.
"Done," said the last king of the Actatl. He tried to coax the dog to come with him, but he could not. He put as much food as he could carry into a small bundle and opened the storehouse to the dog, who would probably be a meal for one of the cats of the jungle, now that the man was gone.
The king made the trek back to the city of the Actatl. Even before he set foot there, he knew the kingdom was gone. The roads were grassed over and the fields untilled. Great plants grew in stone watchtowers.
Perhaps a few old friends would be biding their last days, hiding in the remains of the city. But there was no one, not even dogs, left in the great city from which once the empire of the Actatl had been ruled. And something else was strange. There was no sign of the fires that usually accompanied a siege.
He thought, Yes, the Spaniards have been here. All the gold had been removed. But the pieces, he saw, had not been torn away or hacked away or ripped away but were carefully taken out. He thought for a moment, with great happiness, that one of the later kings had wisely taken the people away, something the old king knew he never could get the priests to agree to. But when he arrived at the high stone altar, he knew otherwise, and he let out from his stomach a deep wail. Whitened bones covered the steps and formed in great piles, already mingling with plants. A small tree grew from the mouth of a grinning skull.